Knight is 25 years old. In mid-February, she said she had stopped using the drug that nearly claimed the life of a friend who overdosed Dec. 13 in her apartment. A prescription muscle relaxant has been helping her detoxify.

Before that, though, she was spending $250 a day on her heroin addiction.

“I wake up in the morning, grab my spoon and shoot up,” she said in December.

Knight earned money to pay for her drug habit by performing massages. In the past, she had prostituted herself. She’d been in and out of too many drug treatment programs to remember. Her parents adopted her two young children, ages 4 and 2. Five people she knew had died of drug overdoses within a recent period of several months.

Then her friend overdosed on her kitchen floor two weeks before Christmas. Paramedics used the heroin antidote Narcan to reverse the overdose.

Knight said she decided to quit using heroin for several reasons: “You are always looking for money to get dope. It is never-ending. You are either high or sick.”

She described the withdrawal from heroin as “10 times worse than the worst flu you’ve ever had.”

And she wants to marry, get a house, get her kids back and expand her family.

She said she is distancing herself from heroin users now that she has stopped shooting up. Even so, she would like to have Narcan on hand in case friends of users call her instead of 911, for fear of legal repercussions.

“Maybe I could help out,” Knight said. “I will tell them my story. ‘Nothing happened to me.’ ‘I am still here.’ ‘I am not going to be charged with anything.’”